The Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine has begun deploying a public domain version of the Department of Veterans Affairs' electronic health record (EHR) system developed by Document Storage Systems, according to the vendor.

The El Paso, Texas-based school is the first medical school in the United States to fully deploy the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA).

Dr. Gilbert Handal, chairman of the pediatrics department and EHR steering committee, said the school chose VistA as its EHR to "leverage the vast resources that the government and the VA have contributed to VistA." He added that many of the residents and the faculty at the school already had some familiarity with VistA.

The family practice department of the center has been running DSS vxVistA since January, and DSS said it will now deploy it to multiple clinics, with installation throughout the medical school by 2008. Once complete, the system will serve more than 1,000 users, said Mike Ginsburg, the company's marketing manager.

DSS currently provides clinical and administrative applications to more than 1,000 VA health care facilities. The El Paso medical school, which is the company's biggest non-VA job to date, will use the same core components of VistA as the VA does. The school also will use DSS-developed add-on modules to support departments not found in VA hospitals, such as pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology. DSS said it is also providing the school with an endocrinology software module.

Ginsburg said DSS has applied to the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT) for certification of vxVistA and expects a decision early next month.